It’s back to work for me this moring after a nice long weekend in the New Forest.

Lots of stories to tell, pictures to upload, that kind of thing.

Interestingly, I managed to find a pair of those sandals with the bottle opener in the sole, and took a couple of pictures, which I will try to upload. When I showed all my friends them in the shop all of them had the same initial reaction: “Wow, cool!”, and then some of them realised, and some of them I had to point out, the fact that it would just pick up all the crap that you walk in. They were rather expensive as well (£35), which I would rather just pay for a good pay of shoes, and the green and yellow ones are nasty (although they did do a nicer colour – a sort of dark khaki brown).

Anyway, I’ll post more information when I can be bothered/have the time.

Something has knackered my ID3 tags in my MP3 collection, and I’m pointing the finger firmly at iTunes (or may be even WinAmp).

I created a new CD for my car last night. Now, my stereo is good enough to let me burn MP3s on to a CD, and then plays the tracks. It can even read ID3 tags (it appears to have some issues in this area, but it seems happier with just ID3 v1 tags). So, last night, I stayed up late, burnt 13 albums (that I own) to a CD. I even validated some of the ID3 tags myself and corrected them using WinAmp, because they all appeared to be missing.

When I got in the car this morning, the tags were missing off all the tracks that I corrected, plus all the tracks on Albums that I ripped previously. Only the ID3 tags on albums that I ripped last night remain – and as yet, I haven’t imported them in to iTunes.

So, here’s what I reckon is happening: iTunes is removing ID3 tags (the bastard). WinAmp has a bug in it which means it doesn’t read or write ID3 tags properly (having not started WinAmp in a while, I got a message about upgrading to v 5.91 – I’m currently using v5.05 – so there might be a slight difference in version going on there!)

Has anyone else experienced this? No? Just me then….

Anyway, this whole thing has got me thinking about my MP3 collection, and what to do with it when I build my MythTV box. I’ll probably store all my MP3s on that box, seeing as it is going to have a couple of monster HDD drives, so I will be able to share them out using NFS and Samba, plus play them through the TV (if I should ever want to – although I can’t imagine that being likely).

So this would be a good time to look at the collection, reorganise it, check the filenames, possible organise it into artist directories, clear out duplicates, may be re-rip albums into a higher bit-rate, check ID3 tags, see if I can get information on all of the songs, etc.

That means that I can then clear out iTunes (apart from the songs that I have purchased), and rebuild the library in there, which should then populate correctly down to my iPod as well.

Enough of the puns, I’m getting fed up with Microsoft Word. Actually, no, scrap that. I’m getting fed up of people giving me crapply formatted documents made in Word.

We’ve just started using formal specifications where I work, and the team that produces them upstairs, obviously don’t know how to properly format a Word document to make it play nicely. I can’t help but think that LyX and LaTeX would be helpful for it’s use, but I doubt that the company would go for that.

We leads me back around to thinking about “Slate”, an app that Richard and I started thinking about just after we left University, as we were a bit fed up of the horrible interface of LyX. Look, it even gets a brief mention at the bottom of Richard’s Applications page.

Wadda ya think Richy-boy? Time to dust off the old Java tutorials and kick some arse?

About.com have started offering some video clips of some of the footage that was shot on the various Apollo missions back the 1960s and 1970s.

I’ve always been a bit interested in this part of time, seeing as it was quite a monumental acheivement for man-kind, and the fact that I missed it by about 30 years.

These clips kind of put it into context for me, having seen a load of clips of man landing on the moon, and jumping around, it’s good to see what they got up to on the way their. Like I-Spy on a car trip, only slightly more important.

Well, I said a couple of days ago that I was going to enter the Twickenham Regatta that took place yesterday, and well, who am I to disappoint.

So, I have been “bricking it” for the past couple of days/weeks, but once I got there, that all seemed to disappear.

Seeing as there were 6 crews that entered the Novice Mens Double, there were 2 heats and 2 crews were drawn to enter the semi-final on a let. And seeing as there were 3 crews from my club entering that race, myself and John (my bow-man) were drawn in the first heat.

As it was our first ever race, we were both still quite nervous, but we got a good start, and kept with it, winning with a 3 length lead. So we were then into the next round, against another crew from our club, made up of 2 juniors with lots of experience, but unfortunately pressure got to us, and we lost that one by about another 3 lengths.

I’m not too upset about losing (even though we lost to two 15 year old school boys, who themselves were in their first mens race), just that we lost because we rowed badly.

I’ll try to get around to posting a picture, but at the minute their still sat on my Mum’s digital camera (mine’s broken!).

So, a little under two weeks ago, I agreed to enter my very first race at Twickenham this coming Saturday.

I’m now beginning to regret that decision. These past two weeks have been hard on the old hands, and today, I’m absolutely knackered. I’ve had a salad for lunch, along with lots of potato, but seeing as our offices are permanently freezing, I’m now stone cold.

I’m not being foolish, I know that the chances of us winning are remote, but I’m just hoping that John and I don’t make complete arses of ourselves, and considering that there are 3 heats, a semi-final, and a final that we need to win, then the chances of us messing up and ending up 4 lengths down get higher with every race.

Wish me luck, I’ll tell you how I do, and try to post a picture after Saturday.

I’ve been on a quest recently to find a mobile to replace my out of warranty Nokia 6600. Except I’m having a hard time finding a replacement.

The one that I’ve fallen in love with is the Sony Ericsson S700, but I couldn’t find any reference to it being launched on my network. So at lunch time today, I headed into a branch of “Phones 4 U”, only to be told that it is being discontinued and looks like it won’t be out on my network – ever

Am I the only person who wishes that Phantom Planet had never left bloody California?

If they hadn’t left, then they wouldn’t have had the inspiration to write a song about returning back there. Therefore, we wouldn’t be subjected to that god damn awful song that gets played far too much on the radio.

The first was a leaflet pinned to a notice board at work (it’s been there since I started over a year ago, but I didn’t notice this until the other day) called “Safe Manual Handling at Work” – Because those manuals can get heavy can’t they?

The second was a road sign I saw whilst driving home for work. Again, I see this sign twice on my way to and from work (on my usual route), but never really thought about it. It was one of the triangular warning signs (with just an exclamation mark in the centre), and underneath it said “Blind Summit” – I never knew there was a meeting place for visually impaired people there!

Incidentally, I’m thinking about starting a T-Shirt printing/design company (just for my friends and myself to start with, but who knows!) as I’ve been coming up with some good things to put on T-Shirts recently, and can’t find anything like them in the shops.

My favourite at the moment is one that I came up with driving to work this morning. It simply says:100% Genius,1% Retarded or slightly less offensive (and significantly less subtle about the joke):98% Genius,3% Can’t Count

I’ve also come up with some other absolute blinders, but I don’t want to spoil the surprise. I guess I could get a Cafe-Press site up and running….